


Sweet, Dark Memories

by Random_ag



Category: Bendy and the Ink Machine
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, Established Relationship, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Pre-Canon, apparently, but also during canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-20
Updated: 2019-12-20
Packaged: 2021-02-26 03:35:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21876727
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Random_ag/pseuds/Random_ag
Summary: Old days taste like hot cocoa.Even in a mouth overrun by ink.My secret satan for DancinInTheInk ;)
Relationships: Sammy Lawrence/Henry Stein
Comments: 12
Kudos: 75





	Sweet, Dark Memories

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DancinInTheInk](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DancinInTheInk/gifts).



A foot kicked gently against the opened door a couple times, as an alternative way to knock. Sammy turned from his score sheet to the quiet gaze smiling at him from the doorstep.

“What are you up to so late?” Henry asked, hands occupied by a couple of steaming mugs.

“I got one better: what are _you_ up to so late?” the musician replied almost bitterly as he tried to eye the cups’ contents.

“Depends on what Joey’s up to so late.”

“Don’t tell me. He’s drawing more storyboards.”

“I’m animating those storyboards into cartoons.”

“And I’m writing music for those cartoons.”

Sammy massaged his sore forehead with a groan as the other chuckled. His brain felt as if looking at another stave would have melted it.

“How long till he burns out?” he asked the animator.

Henry just shrugged, approaching him: “Just wait for that tell-tale _‘thunk’_ when his body falls unconscious on the floor.” he joked. He extended one of the mugs to the music director: “Can I offer you some chamomille tea?”

“Oh, how considerate.” Sammy cooed as he grabbed the handle: “To come in my hour of need with the one drink I despise more than Drew himself.”

He sipped carefully as Henry laughed softly: milk and chocolate, sweet and warm. He licked his upper lip, savoring the taste lingering upon it. The animator’s hot cocoa was too good not to enjoy, especially after such a long, stressing, less than stellar day.

Henry leaned on his desk with his now free hand, enjoying his own drink. His arm trembled ever so slightly as it sustained him; it did not go unnoticed. Sammy rose from his chair and sat instead on his desk, stacking the sheets covered in notes neatly and pushing them to the side so that he could be comfortable.

“Sit.”

“I’m good, Sammy.”

“I insist.”

Henry sighed and obliged. He stretched his legs as far as he could and rolled his head back, a hand massaging the base of his neck as it cracked softly. Fingers made calloused by plucking banjo chords swept over his wrist, carefully, gently.

He smiled. His gaze returned that of the musician; his half lidden eyes were dark in the dim lights, with deep marks underneath them.

“Go home for tonight.” Sammy whispered. His fingers squeezed the animator’s tired, tense hand.

“I have ten more minutes of an episode to do.”

“Henry, listen to me for once. Go home. Eat something. Sleep.”

“Joey said-”

“Joey could animate something himself, every now and then.”

The animator found his chin lifted by those same fingertips. Sammy inspected him carefully, from the bags under his eyes to his greasy hair, to his spent skin. He looked as if he hadn’t gone out of the Studios for weeks. He probably hadn’t.

“You look awful.” he murmured.

Henry closed his eyes and leaned into the touch.

Not a word.

Of course.

When he wanted an argument to be over, he would just shut up.

“I’m saying this for your own good.”

He nodded. His face felt soft in Sammy’s palm.

“Go home.”

His hand left the mug to grab the musician’s wrist, and he pressed his lips on the bony knuckles in a soft kiss.

“Henry, go home.”

“No.”

“You’ll get sick if you keep this up.”

“And you won’t?”

“Oh, dear.” Sammy sighed. He caressed Henry’s cheek with his index finger: “I don’t plan on working for the next six hours, at least.”

The animator grinned cheekily through his weariness: “Then what will you do for the six hours you’ll be trapped in here until Joey passes out?”

Sammy smiled back; he took another long sip of hot cocoa, enjoying every second of it, and exchanged the mug for his trusty banjo, making sure it was tuned perfectly.

“I’ll be trying to get you to sleep.”

“By calling me a sheep?”

“It was _one_ time, I was _stressed_ out of my mind and it’s been _two months_ since Jack fixed the lyrics.”

Henry laughed, head falling backwards. A steady, quiet melody filled the impossibly long silence they shared for minutes that stretched into hours. He could have just listened to Sammy play over and over, every single second of every single day. He would have never gotten tired of it.

A soft ‘thunk’ finally came from above their heads.

“Huh.” the animator commented, “So he did tire himself out, in the end.”

Sammy shrugged: “Serves him right.” he huffed.

“We should put him on a couch.”

“He can spend the whole night passed out on the floor, for all I care.”

“You do like him.”

“Henry.”

“Deep down.”

“Oh, shut your mouth.”

They did carry Joey to a couch. And Henry didn’t oppose any resistence when Sammy pulled him by a sleeve, out of the Studios, into his car, all the way to his house. He didn’t object when he made him take a shower and eat a little dinner.

And he fondly remembered, in some of his last moments of fleeting consciousness as he laid under warm blankets, a hand with calloused fingertips running through his hair, and a heavenly voice as smooth as silk singing a lullaby just for him, lips almost pressed to his ear.

And now he lays on a goddamned sepia floor that echoes his sickly sepia skin, with a faceless figure looming over him - the one that strapped him to a pole and left him to die at the hands of a demon, the one that charged at him through a barricade with an axe, the one that drips big, dense, black drops on him as it readies itself to cut his head clean off of his neck.

And as he stares with wide eyes up to the monster of a man he might have known once, he can only bring himself to think

This isn’t you.

Sammy’s last moments are a vague memory. There’s clear sight for a second, a sickly sepia toned skin with deep dark bags under wide open eyes, the taste of something warm and sweet, some kind of lullaby bubbling in his throat.

Then Tom retrieves the axe from his skull.


End file.
